1
Miss Amelia Dittenhoefer was a figure in Sunbury. She had taught two generations of its young in the old Filbert Avenue school. And during more than ten years, since relinquishing that task, she had supplied the 'Society,' 'Church Doings,' 'Woman's Realm,' and 'Personal Mention' departments of the Voice with their regular six to eight columns of news and gossip.
And as several hundred Sunbury men and women had once been her boys and girls, this sort of personal news came to her from every side. Her 'children,' of whatever present age, accepted her as an institution, like the university building, General Grant, or Lake Michigan. She never had a desk in the Voice office, but worked at home or moving briskly about the town. Home, to her, was the rather select, certainly high-priced boarding-house of Mrs Clark on Simpson Street, over by the lake, where she had lived, at this time, for twenty-one or twenty-two years. She was little, neat, precise, and doubtless (as I look back on those days) equipped for much more important work than any she ever found to do in Sunbury. But Woman's sun had hardly begun to rise then.
As Henry had been, at the age of six, one of her boys, and during the past two years had shared with her the reporting work of the Voice, it was not unnatural that she should stop him as he was hurrying, airily twirling his thin bamboo stick, over to Stanley's restaurant. It was noontime. Simpson Street was quiet. They walked along past Donovan's drug store and Jackson's book store (formerly B. F. Jones's) and turned the corner. Here, in front of an unfrequented photographer's studio, Miss Dittenhoefer stated her problem. She looked, though her trim little person was erect as always, rather beaten down.
'Mr Boice has taken half my work, Henry—“Church Doings” and “Society.” He sent me a note. I gather that you're to do it.'
'Me?' Henry spoke in honest amazement.
'Doubtless. He's cutting down expenses. I mind, of course, after all these years. I've worked very hard. And on the money side, I shall mind a little.'
'You don't mean——'
'Oh, yes. Half the former wage. And they don't pension old teachers in Sunbury. But this is what I want to tell you——'
'Oh, but Miss Dittenhoefer, I don't——'
'Never mind, Henry; it's done. Of course I shouldn't have said as much as this. Though perhaps I had to say it to somebody. Forget what you can of it. But now—I wanted to give you this list. There's a good lot of society for summer. Never knew the old town to be so gay. Two or three things in South Sunbury that are important. They feel that we've been slighting them down there this year. I've noted everything down. And I've written the church societies, asking them to send announcements direct to the office after this.'
'I don't want your work,' said Henry, colouring up. 'It ain't—isn't—square.'
'But it's business, Henry. Mr. Boice explained that in his note. You'll find I've written everything out in detail—all my plans and the right ladies to see. Good-bye now.'
Henry, pained, unable to believe that Miss Dittenhoefer's day could pass so abruptly, walked moodily back to Stanley's and, as usual, bolted his lunch. The unkindness to Miss Dittenhoefer directly affected himself. It meant still more of the routine desk-work and more running around town.
Then, slowly, as he sat there staring at the pink mosquito-bar that was gathered round the chandelier, his eyes filled. It was hard to believe that even Mr Boice could do a thing like that to Miss Dittenhoefer. Coolly cutting her pay in half! It seemed to Henry wanton cruelty. It suggested to his sensitive mind other tales of cruelty—tales of the boys who had gone into Chicago wholesale houses for their training and had found their fresh young dream-ideals harshly used in the desperate struggle of business.
Henry, I am certain, thought of Mr Boice at this moment with about as much sympathy as a native of a jungle village might feel for a man-eating tiger. That look about Miss Dittenhoefer's mouth when she smiled! It was a world, this of placid-appearing Sunbury and the big city, just below the town line, in which men fought each other to the death, in which young boys were hardened and coarsened and taught to kill or be killed, in which women were tortured by hard masters until their souls cried out.
Boice, I am sure, sensed nothing of this somewhat morbid hostility. No; until Robert A. McGibbon turned up in Sunbury, Mr Boice had some reason to feel settled and complacent in his years. His private funds were secure in his wife's name. And he had every reason to believe that, before many months more, it would be his privilege and pleasure to run McGibbon out of town for good. If the matter of Miss Dittenhoefer should, for a little while, stir up sentimental criticism, why—well, it was business. Sound business. And you couldn't go back of sound business.
Henry sighed, got slowly up, had his meal ticket punched at the desk by Mrs Stanley, went back to the office.